Spotlights

A coalition of educational and civil rights groups filed a federal complaint on Thursday saying that black and Hispanic students were disproportionately excluded from New York City’s most selective high schools because of a single-test admittance policy they say is racially discriminatory.

“All that stupid test shows is how good someone is at taking a test,” she said.

This was after I asked her to spend more time on the Kaplan test prep book on our dinner table — the one that’s supposed to help eighth-graders like her prepare for next month’s New York City Specialized High Schools Admission Test.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund today filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights about New York City's specialized high schools' admissions process. The complaint alleges that reliance on an unproven test as the sole determinant for admissions leads to disproportionately low numbers of African-American and Latino students at the schools and violates the civil rights of many minority students who are not admitted.